911 Call #2

Toronto, ON - jeeff - Tuesday, May 24th, 2005 : goo

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i live in the front room, by the street. i live surrounded by boxes and crates in a temporary apartment. the ceilings are high and the other rooms are mostly empty. there are two big windows in the front room, looking out on the street. they have venetians blinds, but i always pull the heavy drapes shut after dark to hide the telltale light from my computer monitors. it’s fine in the daytime, but this neighbourhood isn’t good at night, and that's part of the reason why it's temporary. case in point:

i’d been laying in bed a long time listening to my mind race when a faint sound caught my ear. it continued-- a voice, yelling. it was way too late at night for voices yelling.

i listened, staring up at the ceiling. two people, a couple maybe. the woman was the main voice – venomous and tough, like a coal miner. she’d go silent, and then really roar: “yeah, well WHATA YA THINK I’M gonna say … TAKE YER HANDS off that … ” the man’s voice, when i heard it, was low and oily smooth. he was trying to get her to shut up, placating her. the voices got louder and louder, and then paused.

rap-rap!! rap rap rap!!

shit, they're on the porch! angry pounding on the front door. !!! the woman kept hollering and I thought, is this some home invasion scheme, or what? crackheads it sounded like, trying to get me to the door. i grabbed something heavy and wondered if i was just paranoid. i had to do something, and i wasn't going out there. feeling frayed and tired i picked up the phone.

“911, do you need police fire or ambulance?
police? you’ve got the police.”

the operator was all business but he listened carefully to my story. he asked a few questions and said he’d send someone by. meanwhile the voices had begun to fade again.

back in bed i felt weak as the adrenaline dropped off. again i was nowhere sleep, even as silence returned. especially as silence returned. especially as silence returned. then from down the block came one last shout.

time passed.

the doorbell rang, very loud. it jolted me back to the surface from the depths of a pond. i scrambled to peer out the blinds and saw a peaked blue cap. i grabbed a t-shirt and gave my room a thorough look. the cop rang again, and i arrived at the door still tugging on my shirt. he was youngish, a brit, tall and lanky.

“jason?” he asked. i said no. “oh. ...jeff? you gave us a ring?”

i told the story again. the cop amicably informed me that they were actually in the middle of a pretty big operation in the area right then, totally unrelated, so maybe the crackheads would get caught in the dragnet.

“they always seem to be having a big operation around here,” i grumbled. one week earlier there'd been a fatal shooting in front of the house of lancaster, a seedy strip club up the block on bloor. it was in retribution for a pair of earlier killings. i myself wandered through that dragnet, wondering why there was a cruiser parked in the middle of every intersection down college st., the cops all buzzing like bees, at 1:30am.

i shook the cop's hand for some reason (he was a nice guy) and went to bed, but not to sleep.

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elaine: even more yuk

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